“None of it’s enough, but the fact that he’s pleading guilty at all is some consolation,” the girl’s mother told reporters.

“It’s also some validation that it actually happened. That’s what (my daughter) wanted all along, was some validation for what happened to her.”

Crown attorney Alex Smith read an agreed statement of facts into the record.

Smith said the victim and another girl were consuming alcohol at the house with four boys that night.

He said the young man used his cellphone to take a picture of a friend having sex with the victim from behind while she was leaning out his bedroom window vomiting.

In the photo, the boy and the girl are both naked from the waist down. The boy, who is smiling at the camera, has his right hand on her hip while giving a thumb’s up with his left hand.

Smith said the victim was not aware the photo was being taken and did not consent to it being taken.

The accused sent the photo to the other boy’s phone the next day, the prosecutor said.

“The photograph was subsequently distributed to numerous persons, most of whom attended the same high school as (the boys and the girl),” Smith said.

The girl died after trying to kill herself about 17 months later, in April 2013. She was 17.

Another Eastern Passage man, 19, has a trial set for November on two counts of distributing child pornography. The Crown alleges he’s the boy in the photo.

The pair were charged in August 2013 and are being dealt with in youth court because they were under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offences.

The identities of the accused and the girl are banned from publication, either by the Youth Criminal Justice Act or the Criminal Code.

The girl’s parents and their supporters filled the back row of the public gallery for Monday’s proceeding. They wore T-shirts emblazoned with the girl’s name.

Her parents say the photo was taken during an alleged sexual assault. They went public with their daughter’s story after her death.

Media outlets, with the support of the girl’s parents, argued earlier this year that it would be in the public interest to lift the publication ban on the victim’s name, but a different judge denied the request.

That judge ruled that the Criminal Code requires judges, without discretion, to ban the publication of information that could identify victims who appear in child pornography.

Smith was brought in from Ontario to prosecute the case in youth court after local Crown attorneys advised against filing charges.

The 19-year-old also faces several matters in adult court, including charges of making online threats to kill the girl’s father.

Outside court Monday, the father said he wishes charges were laid while his daughter was still alive.

“Why wasn’t something done when it would have made a difference?” he said.

Police knew about the incident within a week of it happening, the man said, “but allowed this image to spread further, even knowing that this was child pornography.”

“They knew who had it, they knew who was doing it and there was nothing done to stop it.

“Every time it’s shared, it victimizes (my daughter) all over again. It literally victimized her until she lost her will to live.

“They should have stopped this when it happened.”

The father said the guilty plea “tells everyone that police knew child porn was being spread around Halifax and they didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“And also at (her high school) — they knew child porn was being distributed in the halls of their school and they didn’t do anything to stop it at all.

“What that means, really, is they did nothing to protect a victim, and that, to me, is just wrong.”

He said he doubts the other individual charged in the case will plead guilty.

“I have a feeling that they may fight it every step of the way. It’s not hopeful in my eyes at all that he would be the kind of person to admit that he’s ever made a mistake.”

Spokesmen for Halifax RCMP and the Halifax regional school board declined to comment on the father’s remarks.

The provincial government has ordered an independent review of the handling of the case by police and the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service. But that review is on hold while the child pornography charges are before the courts.